Holy Kleenex, Batman! It Was Right Under Our Nose, and We Blew It!

Niremere has long been Retribution/Protection. Of those two, Protection was my favorite – prance in, throw shield, smash things, dance out! For the Light yay! I did, however, chicken out big time when it came to tankingLFR, and I went back to Retribution. I didn’t exactly LIKE Retribution, but I didn’t really HATE it either, and maybe gear would make it better?

We’re More Laid Back HereDownright relaxed, even.

I decided to keep on Retting it up after the patch to see if the 5.4 changes made any positive difference for me. Alas, patch changes or no, I still don’t get Retribution and I just can’t seem to have fun with it. Sure, Inquisition lasts for a whole freaking minute now (OH BOY DON’T I FEEL SPECIAL), but I still don’t like having to expend Holy Power to keep it up. Nope. Nobody need expect the Spanish Inquisition here, because it ain’t happening.

Sure, I Can See My HandsOwait, no, because they’re in front of me and my camera angle’s from behind.

Inquisition doesn’t even LOOK cool. Sure, it gives me glowy hands, but I can’t even see my freaking self in combat half the time, let alone my dainty little hands! I hit like a tired poodle and I am not feeling the two-handed weapon love, because I still love shields and that’s not changing dammit. I can only cast like two Flash of Lights before running out of mana (I can’t use Word of Glory for healing somebody, silly, I gotta use that Holy Power for Templar’s VerdictInquisition I don’t even know anymore) and I can’t offtank worth crap, so there’s no running in and saving the day all dramatic-like in emergencies.* There’s only repairs. And being boring. And feeling like I’m fighting in neck-deep mud.

WELP THAT WENT WELLTank died. Tried to pull the Celestial Protector off a healer. Got eaten. Celestial Protector then had a nice, priestly dessert.

Despite that, I kept dragging Niremere through Throne of Thunder LFR, and she wound up with some shiny tier tokens! I was then regretting exchanging them for Retribution gear (even though I hadn’t actually done that yet), when this conversation more or less occurred:

Me: I know I should use them for Ret … theoretically, a set bonus would help …Friend: Wait, use them for the spec you hate?Me: Yesssssssssssssssssssssssss. Because I shouuuullddddd.Friend: That’s stupid. I don’t even know why you play a spec you hate.

Suddenly, I didn’t know why either. I gave the spec a chance, really! It just never took. Niremere has been in Ret spec for the better part of 80 out of 90 levels, aside from tanking sprees here and there. To continue this way was like bashing my head into a brick wall in the hopes of developing some sort of brain injury that might possibly change my personality, which in turn could possibly make me like Retribution. It clearly wasn’t working out, if only because I have a really thick skull.

So I decided to commence PROJECT “I DON’T KNOW IF I LIKE HOLY, BUT IT ISN’T RET SO THERE.”

First step was to get gear, because nobody wants to run into an instance naked. Accordingly, I ran all the LFRs ever, then died my way around the Timeless Isle looking for chests, and finally I bought PvP crap off the AH to fill in the holes. (I have a new protip for the loading screens: “Warning! The Timeless Isle hurts like mother trucking HELL if you are undergeared!”)

Unfortunately, I am forced to neglect the “finishing touches,” as it were. Since Nir’s gear rocketed up so quickly (we’re talking like twenty item levels), I can’t afford to fully reforge/enchant/gem it. She’s reforged and mostly gemmed at this point, though there is no way in hell I’m enchanting that wep from a heroic dungeon whether I can afford to or not.

Once she had something to wear, Nir ran to the nearest Paladin trainer and gave him gold. It was then time to HEAL ALL THE THINGS. Kinda.

The worst thing about starting healing with a new class at level 90 is that you are stricken with a general feeling of “oh my GAWD, all the things wat the hell is going on,” which can’t be helped except through exposure to the spec and the diligent application of effort. (True understanding comes even later.) And aside from reading a guide to get an idea of what you should be doing, your only real option is to literally click the buttons to see for yourself what they do.

Turns out that not only is it really hard to figure crap out when you have all the things to learn all at once, it’s ESPECIALLY hard to do when they’re almost all named “Holy” Somethingorother. I CAN’T REMEMBER WHICH HOLY DOES WHAT HEALING THING. I actually had to write notes down. NOTES. TO PLAY A GAME. (L-shift click, Light of Dawn, HP click, multi target!)

The only other classes I’ve healed extensively on in recent memory, shaman and druid, don’t really have an equivalent to Holy Power that they have to build up in order to spend. As a result, I spent a fair amount of time freaking out about dropping HP clicking on buttons furiously while wondering why nothing was happening. I would subsequently (and usually abruptly) realize that I had no Holy Power and this particular Holy thing needed it, therefore, fail. I actually do have the bright red status text on my screen for things like “Not enough Holy Power.” I just never read it.

Feeling somewhat overwhelmed, I made a little dwarf paladin with the idea of “learning from the ground up.” But somewhere around level 3, I decided that the effort required to learn crap from scratch at level 90 was probably going to be less than the effort required to level from 1 to 90, so she got left somewhere in the snowy wilds outside Ironforge. I haven’t deleted the character, though, because people on my friends list had a fit were extremely confused when they saw me playing a female dwarf. Maybe I’ll surprise them again later!

So I grabbed a beartank friend with good gear (he assured me that with his self heal, he could solo heroics) and off we went into LFD land. I warned him to be prepared. I warned him I had no clue what all the buttons did, and also that my keybinds were all freaked up, and finally that I still had to set up Vuhdo properly and whatnot, so be careful! Did I get said beartank killed? YEP. YOU BETCHA.

The next morning I queued randomly by myself, which ended up being embarrassing as well. I got caught red-handed with Righteous Fury still on from a failed-ret-tanking episode the night before (see * at end, again). Ugh! It’s like the hunter who leaves Aspect of the Pack on for the whole fight (which I have NEVER done, nope, believe you me, 100% truth telling here). Fortunately the party was quite helpful and gave me a number of tips, and there was a shaman who covered for my general ineptitude (in addition to pointing out that whole Righteous Fury thing).

Now THAT’S the Skill for MeProposed Paladin revamp makes Beacon of Light into something even BETTER.

Later that day, I felt I at least had the basics down because people weren’t dying anymore in heroics. When looking at the Raid Finder to see if there were any LFRs I missed, I realized that Nir had the gearscore to queue for SoO … hmmm.

Crazy? Hell yes. Still, it seemed like a slightly less crazypants idea than learning how to paladerp heal via PvP, which was Goa’s suggestion, so I queued up for it. It was definitely an enlightening experience. It turns out that not only do I need to know buttons, but I also have to relearn mana management, blah. Electrika has almost zero mana issues at present because of gear, Water Shield, Mana Tide totem and the Telluric Currents glyph (which returns a bit of mana if you use Lightning Bolt). Betheki (the druid) is at level 80, which is too high to have the noob type of mana issues, but too low to have LFR “holy crap, please kill it before it ‘zerks” kind of mana issues.

So yeah, who spent practically all of the Fallen Protectors fight using only Holy Shock and Light of Dawn? That would be meeeeee. While I am more than perfectly happy to coast when it comes to DPS (heeeey we got like, six people doing 200k? SWEET), I feel immense guilt when it comes to coasting on heals. I almost left the group three or four times because I felt my heals were too low to justify my presence. I wound up staying anyway because there was an amazing shaman who covered for me and at least one other healer as well. Overgeared? Overachiever? Don’t know, but he was the key to Nir getting the first gear token from this tier. (I am overjoyed that the paladin LFR color scheme does NOT involve nuclear snot green.)

* So let me tell you about the last time Nir was fighting Will of the Emperor, a.k.a. Jan-xi and Qin-xi. As you no doubt know by now if you are a regular LFRer, adds and bosses spawn on the far side of the room, opposite where the entrance is. The idea is to drag the bosses from that end back over to the other, positioning them near the two separate staircases that the raid entered the fight area with. One boss per set of stairs, easy!

In this particular LFR, we had a tank who wasn’t quite clear on what to do other than “get aggro.” He grabbed his boss, yes, but then he stood with it at the back of the room, which is bad. It exposes the DPS to unnecessary heavy damage (which in turn stresses healers), and it’s not like the DPS can go somewhere else to avoid it – adds continually spawn back there for the duration of the fight. Everybody yelled at him but he went nowhere with the boss, so I whispered him and told him to go up front by the stairs, which he did – sorta. He pulled it to the same staircase that the other tank/boss was at, which elicited further shouts of dismay from the LFR. I kept on whispering him, telling him where the second staircase was, and he WAS trying to listen. It’s just that he dragged his boss over about halfway, which is ALSO bad, because that puts the boss right on top of the healers.

So finally I put on Righteous Fury, used Reckoning twice, and ran like a bat outta hell for the right set of stairs. Defensive bubbles? If only I had realized just how squishy I am despite the freaking plate, I would’ve used one. I took 1.5 hits and was DOWN. But hey, since my corpse was apparently much easier to see than my living self, the tank finally got the boss to the right spot and we didn’t wipe. Hooray!

59 thoughts on “Holy Kleenex, Batman! It Was Right Under Our Nose, and We Blew It!”

I agree with the friend who told you to stop playing Ret if you don’t like it.

I finally got around to spending my pile of Timeless Plate tokens to gear up my Paladin’s Holy set (because I’m still too chicken to tank anything “real”), so now I guess I need to read a guide and find out How It Should Be Done at level 90. I remember suddenly having mana issues that I’d never had at earlier levels when I healed a few Cataclysm dungeons, so perhaps a wee bit of time in the Proving Grounds — enough to pass Bronze level, at least — is in order, too.

I’ve gotten to the point now where I can make it through heroics more or less decently (unless someone pulls – accidentally or otherwise – the whole room of students in Scholomance, for example, in which case EFF IT RUNNNNNN). The older LFRs are now no longer an issue even if I’m not near the top of heals, but ToT/SoO? I’m still derping, man. If I’m not running out of mana, I’m doing a fraction of the heals others are and am just barely above the tank.

I want to agree with you but… but… it’s *ret*. How can anyone not love ret? *has breakdown, is carted off foaming at the mouth*

HPala mana regen has always been a bit odd, what with the implicit assumption that you’d be getting at least some mana from SoI. Since that’s been removed and DP was buffed, it should be a bit less bizarre. Used to be that an experienced hpala would effectively never run out, but anyone just getting into the class would oom constantly in the exact same gear.

The last time I felt badass as Retribution, I was somewhere around level 40. Leveling Nir in Dread Wastes as Ret sucked (oh crap what is with this bleed debuff halp), which probably didn’t help my more recent feelings on the subject much. I feel like there’s some sort of gap between my expectations and what Ret actually does. What I want to do: THROW SHIELDS OF LIGHT AND MAKE BUBBLES OF LIGHT THAT GO BOOM AND SAVE THE DAY BY GRABBING ADDS IF NEED BE /FLEX

What Ret does: USE BIG WEAPONS DO A FWOOSHY THING and otherwise, just smack shit with glowy hands.

Seriously, if one handed wep/shield was viable for ret (and they had some sort of shield tossing skill), I’d be all over that.

Let’s be fair: Sac and BoP will save the day, especially if you’re running Clemency. Just bind ’em to something in Vuhdo and BAM! Bubbles. 😀 As for grabbing adds… uh… yeah. Plate classes in general don’t feel very platey at the moment, probably because every caster on the planet has passives that match or beat our armour. Plate’s a fashion statement, and happens to be the only thing with +str.

Go watch Swifty’s prot warrior PvP videos and weep for what could have been.

I’m loving my ret paladin right now. I couldn’t ret at all during cata but now they’ve fixed all the stuff I had trouble with and I can ret and oh man it feels good to actually play my main, whee! But I agree with your friend that told you not to play it if you don’t like it. If it’s not fun for you it’s not worth it. And Inquisition is… well I’ve got a love/hate relationship with that. I love how much better it is now for me than it was in Cata when I only got holy power from Crusader Strike. But it’s still a kind of annoying mechanic.(I think I probably go the opposite route to you and waste Holy Power refreshing it a little too often.)
I love prot pallies too but have the same fear of tanking LFRs. All that said… I’m going to be watching so hard to see how you do with holy because learning holy is my next challenge for myself too. I tried doing holy healing in Seish’s offspec some in Cata. Did I let 85s die in Vault of Archavon because I didn’t know what the heck I was doing? Yep. I didn’t even try at level stuff because I decided I was too bad. So I’m trying it from the ground up. I can’t seem to figure stuff out as well starting at 90. I hope you do, I wish you all the luck and happy posting about it because I want to read and hopefully learn stuff. 😀

Ironically, I did start playing Nir at the tail end of Cata before Pandaland came out. I think I did Cata-styled Retribution for about a month before I went Protection, and then it changed again in Pandaland (I think?), so my memories of what it was like as a Cataretadin are not that great. (This could also be due to how I powerleveled Nir from the low 70s to 85 plus the required gear for the Theramore scenario, which burned more braincells than I can count on my hands.)

When I am in the middle of caring about Inquisition, I refresh it too often, too. It’s like a miracle (see wat I did thar) if I let it get down to like, 5 seconds before refreshing it.

HEY, THINGS IN THE VAULT HIT HARD, MAN, DEATH IS LEGIT. And not your fault. Obviously they should have been using defensive cooldowns! /yeah

True story: despite leveling Electrika in resto from level 1 on up to 90, it was only at level 90 while in the Siege of Orgrimmar that I finally realized that “Healing Stream Totem” was not, in fact, “Healing Tide Totem.” It was like discovering a whole new totem!!

…please tell me you weren’t talenting into YOUR BEST COOLDOWN and not using it…
(pre-SoO you actually needed to take the talent to have HT – now it’s baseline, simply because none of the other talents could compete with its throughput. even remotely.)

Cata ret wasn’t anywhere near as cool as ret is today. We didn’t have any sort of gap-closer, holy power was really scarce – hell, getting HP on Judgement hits alone was an end of expansion set-bonus, and got baked in simply because of the profuse tears of joy shed by a million pallies. Oh, and we didn’t have a basic AoE HP generator – AoE meant using holy whirlwind (can’t remember the name right now, worst pally EU) instead of TV. etc etc uphill both ways in the snow (oh wait that would have been Wrath…)

THAT IS CORRECT. It didn’t put a button onto my toolbars automatically when I learned the talent because there were no spots left for it. And for some reason, I thought that it changed Healing Stream. /shrug As the family saying goes, “If it was a snake, it would’ve bit you.”

The more you know!

Technically you could still go uphill both ways in the snow in Kun-Lai.

I really wish they’d eyeball Inquisition and give it a similar treatment to a Rogue’s Slice n’ Dice, where Envenom/Eviscerate refreshes the duration with a glyph. If I could refresh the duration of Inquisition with Templar’s Verdict, I’d be all over it.

From someone who plays a rogue as well: the glyph refreshes SnD when you land a killing blow. It’s only Assassination that gets a refresh on Envenom. One of my favourite things about playing an assassin… combat spends way too much time refreshing, especially at lower level, and while Sub’s opening “lol u ded” hit is hilarious, it’s also got a priority queue that sort of makes one’s head spin trying and pull it off while keeping in range and out of bad. No clue how those PvP folks manage it.

Plus, sub has a positional requirement. Same reason kitty gets super frustrating… relying on tanks not to spin bosses right round baby right round (like a record baby right round round round) is a fool’s errand.

Point being, for anything other than a mut, SnD is actually *more* annoying than IQ – and a larger chunk of your damage relies on it, too.

I deliberately chose Incanter’s Ward for my mage, and I still don’t use that half the time either. Looks like I’m unlikely to change, so … guess I’d better get used to a life of suboptimal DPS and/or just do healing full time. 😀

Ah, yeah that makes sense.. since I’ve only ever played Assassination, I guess I just assumed it was the same for each spec. Thanks for clearing all that misinformation up lol. Keeping SnD up manually has got to be a giant PITA.

Eh, Combat generates combo points at a fair rate anyway. Since its damaging finishing moves hit like a wet noodle, it’s not really such a schlep keeping up the one that is – if unexciting – at least effective.

The sad thing is Sub. Sub doesn’t get the auto-refresh except per glyph, but they *do* have a couple of passives that buff SnD – one gives extra energy regen while it’s up, and their mastery just flat-out buffs SnD by a fair percentage. Given that mastery’s effect also buffs their other finishing moves, this is probably just so that sub rogues actually bother to keep it running rather than just going “fuck it” and spamming Evis.

Sometimes I just want to say “fuck it” and spam Evis, though. I know keeping up things like SnD, Inquisition, Invocation, etc., is a way to keep us paying attention, but it’s not a very fun mechanic when you’re already trying to “do things while doing other things”. Refreshing buffs just isn’t exciting.

Paying attention requires effort, and I’ve got a limited amount at my disposal. If I must pay attention to positioning, cooldowns on skills, what I’m standing in, adds I should be switching to, etc. etc. etc., I’m going to be running out of steam when it comes to keeping whatever buff up.

It’s weird, because although paladerps and warriors still have these buffs with short cooldowns, they DID just add a glyph for DKs that makes their Horn of Winter thing last up to an HOUR (it originally was just two minutes). Why can’t they do that with Inquisition and Friends?

But DKs will still use it any time there is an opening in their rotation for the 10% runic power gain. So even though it lasts an hour, it’s still used much more often. Warriors are in the same boat with Battle Shout since it gives them rage when they use it.

Darn you and your logic! I guess my point is that although yes, DKs do use the thing for runic power, the buff that it provides still hangs around, so … uh … well, they don’t have to use it for the purpose of the buff most of the time! /yes

My Ret Pally is a female Dwarf and I moonlight as Holy. I actually hated Ret with a passion at first, so much so that I vended all of my 90 ret gear to get a Holy set. I love healing on my Paladin but it took some getting used to. It doesn’t help that, like you said, everything is Holy-whatever, Holy-shit, etc., and uses the same. Exact. Color scheme. fADKSDJ!JDFK!!!1one!

The first time I healed as Holy, we wiped over and over again on Coren Direbrew last year right as I hit 90 in MOP. Turned out the tank was 87 and geared for DPS, so I started thinking maybe it wasn’t *me* who was sucking (always, ALWAYS blame someone else as a healer).

LFR is good practice for that, and I found that stacking tons of Mastery helped a lot. I’m back to being Ret now and Inquisition lasting a full minute is a godsend, much like the feeling I got when seals began to last longer than 60 seconds. It’s all trial and error, but if you hate it, definitely switch.

Are you still finding mastery-stacking effective? It used to be unbelievable due to the interaction with Flame constantly refreshing the shield, so blizz removed mastery from HF specifically to kill that interaction.

My Holy set is still Mastery heavy, but I take Sacred Shield instead of HF so I never noticed the HF interaction. My Moonkin is my main, so the Paladin is just an alt I play around with. The last time I healed extensively on her, Mastery was the #1 secondary stat. Not sure what it is now, but I haven’t changed anything and don’t really run in to any problems. At least not yet.

It was a gif I uploaded to a post which remains in Draft Purgatory, which is why I could see the thing but you guys can’t. (That’s my story anyway.) I’m too lazy to find the gif again to reupload it, so basically it was a dog running into a room and falling the eff over, which I picture as occurring at the exact moment the mental vision, described by CBA, popped into the doggy’s mind.

Hey, learning to heal in PvP is not a bad idea… encounters are generally short but high-stress, situational awaerness and movement are important so you can’t just tunnelvision the bars, and if you don’t figure out where your defensives and cds are toot sweet then you’re due for a couple of minutes in the graveyard. Honestly, after learning to heal against tricksy, unpredictable players, raid bosses won’t even register on the “OHSHI” scale.

And yes, pally abilities all being called “Holy x of Divine Holiness” can get a bit perplexing.

I was using Vuhdo’s Buff Watch, which WAS working, it’s just … it didn’t solve the problem of having to track the damn thing in the first place!

There comes a point where frustration and/or panic prevent learning from occurring, and I highly suspect that would be the case for me in PvP. At least in LFR, mobs don’t jump around you like a monkey on crack unless the tank’s being a jackass.

Well, clearly you should just go rogue, which will solve this problem for you. How do I know this? ’cause I’ve been in like, three LFD parties where I see the rogue just throwing crap at the boss, over and over, endlessly, unashamed and … ok, doing very little damage, but hey, you’d be ranged.

Hey, this is a legitimate issue! Well, maybe not the not-a-leg thing. But not realising you’re behind say, Thok, Horridon or any dragon ever will get you buttmurdered. And that’s not a very dignified way to go.